Top Technology Trends for Hospital Librarians -Michelle Kraft

Unlike some of the others here I stopped at 8 things because I really tried not to overlap the others and I tried to look at the things effecting hospital libraries and librarians. I am sure there are many other trends out there that you think are important, so please feel free to comment.

In no particular order…

1. Complete hospital system integration and collaboration:As more and more things become available electronically users (hospital employees) are demanding for everything to be available from one platform and at their finger tips. They want the lab results, EMRs, diagnostic images, pharmacy, etc. all on one platform or at least on platforms that seamlessly play well together. What does this mean for the library? Library resources, (electronic journal articles, textbook chapters, videos, etc.) must be equally accessible within the same platforms doctors, nurses, and medical students are using to treat patients. Think of everything your library has on its web page, many of those resources need to be and eventually will be seamlessly integrated into the hospital’s information platform. So a doctor seeing a pediatric patient with maple syrup disease can choose to look at articles, book chapters, etc. all from a link within the electronic medical record. We are beginning to see this type of library resource integration with EMRs, products such as iConsult link FirstConsult, Mosby’s Drug Consult, and MDConsult into the EMR. However, iConsult only brings MDConsult (Elsevier) products to the EMR. It does not integrate access to articles or texts from other publishers/products. Therefore you still have a dichotomy of library resources at the point of care, those that can work in the EMR and those that can’t. In the future look for company to step up and create product that would allow portal and links from the EMR to multiple library resources regardless of publisher/vendor.

2. Mashups: Mashups are blended applications combining two or more existing programs to produce a third program. Like all new technologies, the rules and standards have not quite kept up. There are ongoing issues and questions with data such as security, privacy, copyright, and licensing. However, mashups open up a world of possibilities through combining various products to provide better and different library services. For example, Umlaut-Winner of OCLC’s Research Software Competition, is a very cool open source mashup (so you can grab it tweak it and use it at your library) for finding full text articles, books, and information. It combines information from an OpenURL Link Resolver program, with web content from Amazon.com and WorldCat.org. Expect ILS systems to begin to license their code to enterprising library customers to create their own institutional mashup. Ooh perhaps a medical library might create a mashup bringing their information resources into point of care systems.

3. Wireless and portable wireless devices:Hospital employees as well as patients, families, and visitors will use and depend on these devices with greater frequency, creating an increased demand for access to WiFi networks. Portable wireless devices seek out the WiFi networks, once the network is activated in a hospital, users will demand to use it. IT departments already dealing with bandwidth and security will have to address issues regarding what is accessible and who can get on the WiFi network. Already hospitals’ Intra-Internet policies vary widely from one to another. While one hospital allows and even encourages patients and their families to use web mail or blog from hospital computers, other hospitals’ IT policies are more draconian. In an age where restaurants (Panera Bread Co.), automotive places (Lube Stop), and public libraries offer free WiFi users will expect the same from a hospital WiFi and the library will be involved.

4. Virtual reality: As computer graphics and technology improve exponentially, virtual reality becomes a increasingly more important tool in medical education. University of Buffalo researchers created a “Fingertip Digitizer,” which users wear on the tip of the index finger. Hand gestures can be used to precisely direct the actions of electronic devices. As the user touches objects with the finger, it and can transfer precise physical characteristics to a computer. It can even sense the shape and size of a human gland or tumor. Libraries work closely with medical education and it important for librarians to be aware of the possibilities of virtual reality education.

5. Multimedia and Streaming Media: Smaller, faster, more portable, more applications and usages are the names of the game. Radiology images can be downloaded to iPods, the University of Toronto students digitally record and critique simulated patient exams, and medical podcasts are everywhere. It is a potpourri of information scattered throughout the Internet. Just as hospital IT policies vary widely regarding Intra-Internet access, so do the hospital multimedia policies. Many hospitals IT departments already block access to sites such as YouTube, but there are many other sites that are legitimately for medical education, including but not limited to online meetings, continuing education, videos and podcast. Not only will IT and the library have to walk the fine line between providing access to medical multimedia verses Mentos and Diet Coke erruption videos, but libraries will be faced with how to find and access these multimedia files for users. That could be anything from indexing podcasts, videos, or programs in medical databases (such as MEDLINE) or participating in online repositories.

6. Cloud architecture: Social tagging has become quite popular on the Internet. Most people associate tagging with sites like Flikr (photo tagging and sharing), del.icio.us (tagging web pages) but CiteULike and Connoteaare two online reference management systems for academics, clinicians, and scientists that utilize tagging. While many librarians are leery of “cataloging by the People,” tagging is growing in popularity and can will have an effect in cataloging and databases. Expect more library cataloging systems and databases to incorporate some form of folksonomy into their system, possibly by allowing records to contain both the librarian generated controlled vocabulary and user generated tags. After all what did we all learn in our indexing and cataloging classes in library school? The more descriptive terms a record has means more entry points for a user to find the record. We want our users to find information.

7. Open Source: Open source software offers programmers the opportunity to customize your library software, allowing for greater flexibility at a lower cost. Koha is a well known integrated library system using open source software which is used by libraries across the United States. Libraries who don’t have programmers can use companies such as LibLime that provide customization, support and training to libraries using open source software systems. While open source software systems have been around for a while, expect them to rapidly grow in popularity as mashups become more popular. Because libraries using open source software do not have to worry about the ILS’s propriety data they will be able to quickly take advantage of adding or creating library mashups to their systems. 8. Relationship searching: Medical librarians are used to and really good at finding articles on particular subjects that are already known. But is much more difficult to find information on the unknown relationship between various proteins, genes, and signaling pathways. Text mining allows searchers to findpatterns and trends to linking two otherwise unconnected articles to each other. An early example of text mining the medical research was Dr. Don R. Swansonwho was researching migraines in the 1988. Starting just with the term “migraine,” he downloaded and looked at the titles of 2,500 Medline abstracts. As certain concepts caught his attention he would subsequently search to see whether that term was in other articles related to migraines. This eventually lead him to the term “spreading depression,” which he discovered that magnesium as treatment for spreading depression. He began to discover links and connections of magnesium deficiency through the literature, leading him to hypothesize that magnesium deficiency might be a causal factor in migraines. The relationship between magnesium deficiency and headaches was soon substantiated through experiments. Prior to his research there were no articles in Medline containing both of the terms “migraines” and “magnesium” and only eleven articles with “dietary deficiency” and “migraines.” Databases such as Chilibot, XplorMed, BioIE Search, and iHop are making the kind of research Dr. Swanson performed much easier and faster. These databases seem to be primarily used by biological scientists and in no way replace the human factor, but they lead to another method of conducting medical research. Look for more researchers asking about text mining databases, and librarians should prepare themselves by being more familiar with these databases as compliments (not replacements) to Medline.Finally, while doing research for my top technologies I noticed a couple articles on technology busts and failures. Just something interesting to read while looking at prediction lists. Technology’s 10 most inexcusable failures Ten Failed Tech Trends for 2005–Interesting in that they list the iPod as a failure. Huh.

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